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codedivine
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Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 AMD Turion impressions

Wed Apr 06, 2011 12:05 pm

Here are some impressions from the Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 after a few hours of use. First the specs (I have not made any upgrades myself yet):

14'' 1366x768 Display. Matte! (Calling UberGerbil!).
Matte black finish.
AMD Turion II P540 (2.4GHz, 25W TDP, 45nm, 2MB L2 cache), Radeon 4250, 2GB RAM.
320GB 7200rpm drive (WD Scorpio Black thankfully)
Realtek Wifi and Realtek gigabit ethernet.
3xUSB 2.0 + 1 USB/eSATA combo, ExpressCard, HDMI, VGA-out, DVD writer.
6-cell 48WHr battery.

Now the impressions. First, this is not a T series thinkpad so forget about comparisons with T series. This is a budget machine (cost me about $500+Tax) so it is hard to complain.

1. The build quality is decent and certainly a step up from other budget systems. Along with Lenovo support and thinkvantage tools etc, this is quite nicely separated from other cheap laptops.

2. Display and finish: I like the matte display and the matte finish. Note that not all SKUs come with matte, so do check out the details of your particular SKU if you intend to buy one.

3. Keyboard is quite nice though I do prefer the "classic" thinkpad keyboards to this one. The keys are soft and offer slightly less feedback than classic thinkpad keyboards but is still quite nice to type on. It easily beats the keyboards that you will find on most other laptops. I also have a X100e and the keyboard on the X100e is quite similar except that Edge 14 keyboard seems to be about 10% larger in each dimension. Trackpad is generously sized and is decent but I use an external mouse mostly. Trackpoint is also present but I have not tested it.

4. Ample connectivity and easy upgrade of HDD and RAM are nice to have.

5. Performance is decent though I plan to upgrade RAM to 4GB. I have not tested battery life so far. It stays cool and does not become noisy (though that is subjective).
 
anotherengineer
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Location: Northern, ON Canada, Yes I know, Up in the sticks

Re: Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 AMD Turion impressions

Wed Apr 06, 2011 12:29 pm

Looks Nice.

I wish they would use IPS panels in laptops though :|

Here is a last gen system thats not too bad considering it has 4650 dedicated graphics.

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku= ... omoid=1306
Life doesn't change after marriage, it changes after children!
 
UberGerbil
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 AMD Turion impressions

Wed Apr 06, 2011 12:57 pm

Congratulations, you made today's shortbread
codedivine wrote:
Matte!
Yay!

ExpressCard is an unusual feature in what amounts to a budget "prosumer" machine. It's unfortunate that it's not more widely adopted, but it makes for a much more flexible laptop.

Do update when you have battery-life impressions. This seems to be AMD's weakness. Does it run hot at all (the x100e was roundly criticized for this)?
 
codedivine
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 AMD Turion impressions

Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:11 pm

No it does not get hot. It does become a little warm, but nothing unusual and definitely a LOT cooler than the X100e. You can easily use this on your lap.
About battery life, I will provide a better estimate later. A quick take however is that after 20 minutes of web browsing on wifi under power saver and 50% brightness, Windows estimates 3 hr 15 minutes of battery is remaining.
 
codedivine
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Re: Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14 AMD Turion impressions

Mon Apr 18, 2011 7:08 pm

Battery life update: I installed Ubuntu 10.10 and under Ubuntu the battery lasted about 3 hours with wifi on, 80% brightness, power management set to "on demand" and with a workload consisting of mixed web browsing, a few relatively heavy compiles and with Eclipse IDE running all the time. I estimate that with a lighter workload you can easily do 3hr 30 minutes or more.

The laptop has stayed fairly cool and fairly silent.

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